LeAnn Atwood Iron Springs Elementary
[email protected] Tenement Living - “How the Other Half Lives” Objective: Students will use Jacob Riis’ novel, How the Other Half Lives, to see what life was like to many poor immigrants during the 1890’s. Students will understand that primary sources can help us to understand people, places, and events from the past. Background Information about How the Other Half Lives - from Wikipedia: In the 1890s many people in upper- and middle-class society were unaware of the dangerous conditions in the slums among poor immigrants. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant who himself could not originally find much work, hoped to expose the squalor of the 19th-century Lower East Side of Manhattan. After a successful career as a police reporter,[1] he published a photojournal documenting these conditions using graphic descriptions, sketches, photographs, and statistics. Riis blamed the apathy of the monied class for the condition of the New York slums, and assumed that as people were made more aware of these conditions they would be motivated to help eradicate them. In 1889 Riis wrote a magazine article exposing some of the harsh conditions of New York slums which was published with a number of engravings of his photographs in Scribner's Magazine.[2] Due to its disturbing pictures and articles, the city's rich newspaper owners had refused to publish it.[citation needed] Yet soon the article proved to be popular and Riis spent the better part of a year expanding it into the book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, published by Scribner's Books in 1890.[2] The book was also successful.